Ripple or Bitcoin

[MPOE-PR]

As a user and entrepreneur who is still fairly new to these modern payment solutions, it's very easy for me to be supportive of Ripple. Meanwhile MPOE and his/her ilk are diminishing my like for Bitcoin ttytt.

I know exactly how you feel.  Especially as it relates to whether or not to allow my business to be associated with such.  As they say, all money isn't good money.   

This brings an excellent opportunity for me to clarify some points:

A. Internet dork != entrepreneur; Internet dork != businessman; Website != business; etc. 

B. Bitcoin is not a democracy. What you like is immaterial. Nobody asked you, it's not here to be shaped by you, it's here to shape you.

C. Ripple is broken nonsense but complex enough to confuse Internet dorks who think they're entrepreneurs in charge of businesses on the strength they've made some website somewhere (at most). On top of that, there's a scamcoin layer which some people think will make them enough to allow them to exit at some point. It's pretty certain this will never happen (even if well positioned speculators may make a few bucks, like any HIYP/Ponzi in history).

This is all, now let's keep on yakking, it's the Interwebs after all.

OpenCoin is linked "for profit" business. The PR that misterbigg displays tell us that this is going absolutely nowhere. I and everyone I know have already unloaded every single ripple. It is a scam.

Congrats, you get the cookie.

It is a fact that Mircea's arguments sometimes go a bit overboard and the personal accusations (maybe sometimes wrong) should be avoided, but if you can look behind the sarcasm then what you find is simple and basic logic. And guess what, at the end, logic always wins.

Name's Hannah, if you must. MP is my boss. MP is teh boss of us all.

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[ivanc]

Name's Hannah, if you must. MP is my boss. MP is teh boss of us all.

Since you insist Hannah, I'm obliged to quote Baudelaire, dans le texte:
"Aimer les femmes intelligentes est un plaisir de pédéraste."

But I fully support your attempt at introducing some mix on here!

[high110]

All i have to say is Liberty Reserve...same fate for Ripple.

[nameface]

I have a sneaking suspicion TradeFortress, MPOE, and some of the major Ripple detractors may be working in Ripple's favour. Their impact on these forums is may really be a net positive for Ripple, since Katz and Co. clearly have the ability to respond to any questions or legitimate criticisms, and are open to debating Ripple's features.

As a user and entrepreneur who is still fairly new to these modern payment solutions, it's very easy for me to be supportive of Ripple. Meanwhile MPOE and his/her ilk are diminishing my like for Bitcoin ttytt.

Let me tell you, with no disrespect, that if you really were an entrepreneur, you wouldn't be that naive. Those who are buying into Ripple at this premature stage are either the naive/hipster types or the accomplices that Opencoin has managed to buy into the scheme. Once Opencoin releases the full spec and the source code of Ripple, we can start evaluating it and decide what its real value is. Before that, it is just vaporware speculation.

It is a fact that Mircea's arguments sometimes go a bit overboard and the personal accusations (maybe sometimes wrong) should be avoided, but if you can look behind the sarcasm then what you find is simple and basic logic. And guess what, at the end, logic always wins.
Ripple might have bought fanboys and convinced dodgy VCs into the scheme, but it doesn't change the foundations of what it relies on. Their algorithm is flaky to say the least.

I wouldn't go like Mircea and make personal accusations of scam against members of their team, or against the naive types that they have managed to buy out. Surely someone like David Schwartz is not malicious and he's the one being used here, not the scammer. Throughout his posts, he comes accross as a curious scientist eager to explore a novel type of consensus system. Obviously, I wouldn't put the guy who created the card exchange website and who is now fiddling around with VCs in the same category. Both of them surely would like to become richer, however... anyway, back to the argument.

For the lazy types who can't be bothered thinking too much, the reality is as follows: the algorithm that Ripple would like to use for their system has no stable fixed point. Not if it's open source, not if it's honest, not if it's decentralized. It boils down to a deeper and abstract (and unproven) argument, that I'd formally sum up as this: "only Proof-of-work cannot be faked". This, in turn, comes from a deeper and general law of the world we live in, the law of "conservation of energy". For those without any scientific background, this law implies that energy cannot be faked. This is why the consensus system of Bitcoin was made to rely on Proof-of-work (= energy) and nothing else.

Now, if you prefer to believe in the marketing of Ripple rather than the hard facts, logic and mathematics of Bitcoin, it's entirely up to you. I would strongly advise people to let the Ripple developers do their work first though. Until they release a working (and open source) product, as far as I'm concerned Ripple doesn't exist yet.

You just wasted ~500 words to say: "Once Opencoin releases...the source code...we can start evaluating".

I agree that "logic wins", but I don't see logic in your post. It's pretty much just baseless insults

What do you have against Jed now? His project has potential and he's been offered big VC funding, and this should reflect negatively on him because he doesn't come across on this forum like as much of a cutesy scientist as JoelKatz? These character analyses aren't pertinent to the discussion, other than the fact that many of us believe JoelKatz and Jed to be trustworthy.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Oh great, another Cripple discussion.
Let me just put this here:


Dry facts:
- Ripple is NOT open source
- Ripple is NOT decentralized
- Ripple does NOT use "the same underlying cryptography" as Bitcoin
- Ripple is NOT counterfeit proof
- Ripple CAN PRINT as much XRP as they want (they already did actually).

For more, check http://ripplescam.org/ and this topic



Also check out this lies on their website, while you still can.

The world's first open payment network

Get in our github

(Yeah, like that GitHub repo is the WHOLE source)

Ripple is an open source, distributed peer-to-peer payment network
Ripple transactions are irreversible, sent over the Internet, and counterfeit proof
Ripple uses the same underlying cryptography as Bitcoin

Ripple is an open source peer-to-peer payment system. Ripple lets you easily, cheaply, and safely send money over the Internet to anyone, anywhere in the world. Because Ripple is P2P software, no individual, corporation, or government controls Ripple

Lies, lies lies, lies. Goddamn lies everywhere.

[ElectricMucus]

Dry facts:
- Ripple is NOT open source
- Ripple is NOT decentralized
- Ripple does NOT use "the same underlying cryptography" as Bitcoin
- Ripple is NOT counterfeit proof
- Ripple CAN PRINT as much XRP as they want (they already did actually).

-It is open source, just not published, you can get rippled if you ask opencoin for access
-correct, but it's designed to be decentralized, it just hasn't been published
-does that really matter? If it works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't, no fuss about it.
-this makes no sense whatsoever, it's not a currency but a debt based payment system, there is nothing to counterfeit.
-correct, they could, now before release change the number of XRP, but they would undermine their efforts, and after release the can not any more, and actually there might as well be nodes already not under the control of opencoin in which case, it's about as hard to do as in the beginnings of Bitcoin.

Bingo, It's not released yet.  
Your post is intentionally misleading by assuming the limited beta is the state of it's design.

[misterbigg]

they could, now before release change the number of XRP, but they would undermine their efforts, and after release the can not any more, and actually there might as well be nodes already not under the control of opencoin in which case, it's about as hard to do as in the beginnings of Bitcoin.

There are already a lot of individuals and corporations which not only have access and are running the Ripple server, but also have money issued in the form of IOUs or are holding XRP. Since changing the total number of XRP would require starting over with a brand new genesis ledger, I highly doubt any of those entities would accept it.

[timeofmind]

they could, now before release change the number of XRP, but they would undermine their efforts, and after release the can not any more, and actually there might as well be nodes already not under the control of opencoin in which case, it's about as hard to do as in the beginnings of Bitcoin.

There are already a lot of individuals and corporations which not only have access and are running the Ripple server, but also have money issued in the form of IOUs or are holding XRP. Since changing the total number of XRP would require starting over with a brand new genesis ledger, I highly doubt any of those entities would accept it.

Sorry? Introducing more ripples in the system requires starting a new genesis ledger? That is interesting. Please explain.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

-It is open source, just not published, you can get rippled if you ask opencoin for access

That is NOT the definition of Open Source.
Bullshit.

-correct, but it's designed to be decentralized, it just hasn't been published

Which means exactly that it is CURRENTLY centralized.
Double Bullshit with Extra Chips.

-does that really matter? If it works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't, no fuss about it.

It matters, because they lie about it.
Bullshit #3 with extra Onion.

-this makes no sense whatsoever, it's not a currency but a debt based payment system, there is nothing to counterfeit.

But it has "units", which could be counterfeited. For example, by government seizing ripple central servers.
4 Bullshits plus cola and mashed potatoes.

-correct, they could, now before release change the number of XRP, but they would undermine their efforts, and after release the can not any more, and actually there might as well be nodes already not under the control of opencoin in which case, it's about as hard to do as in the beginnings of Bitcoin.

Does not matter as they claim otherwise on their site.
Bullshit #5 with some butter.

Bingo, It's not released yet.  

Who cares. They lie, they profit, they scam.
Bullshit #6 with italian pasta and salami.

Your post is intentionally misleading by assuming the limited beta is the state of it's design.

My post is intentionally spreading the truth about the CURRENT STATE of affairs so less people will be scammed by lying Ripple fuckers and their propaganda tubes, like you are.

Total bullshits counted: 6
Will it be card or cash, sir ?

[misterbigg]

Introducing more ripples in the system requires starting a new genesis ledger? That is interesting. Please explain.

OpenCoin doesn't "control" XRP in the sense that they can just send commands to the network to create new ones or arbitrarily adjust anyone's account balance. There's no transaction that means "create XRP." Even if you were to add such functionality yourself, you would have to convince everyone else running a validator that they should accept your change. And who would authorize the creation? No one would accept it.

Instead, I believe they constructed a ledger by hand that holds a 100 billion XRP balance in a designated account. Then they ran Ripple off of this ledger. If you query the validators and go back in history I believe you can trace all of the XRP in existence to that one account (it's mentioned in the wiki).

Anyone could of course fork Ripple once it's open sourced and make a brand new ledger but then the problem remains, who gets the 100 billion XRP? It makes the most sense for it to go to the people that wrote the software since they are the best positioned to keep improving it (and they already intimately know how it works).

You could try to remove the XRP entirely but that will create an enormous number of new problems such as what to do about connection spamming. It's easy to casually propose alternatives but they are difficult to get working right.

Ultimately any scheme to change either XRP's creation or distribution will likely fail, because there is already a growing body of businesses that are conducting commerce with the existing ledger chain.

[ElectricMucus]

If it's not open source what it it then? Surely it's not proprietary since the source code is available to the users.

In a sense you might be right, and you might not, do you know there aren't any other nodes than those under control of opencoin? Do you think that nobody took them on on the offer to get rippled on individual access?

They use cryptographic hashes for validation, besides pointless nit picking it is true, again what's the fuss?

The goverment could seize lots of things, your point? The goverment could also break into your home and steal your bitcoin wallet. Yes, I think that notion is equally ridiculous.
Your rambling about units and central servers do not even make sense.

Well they are claiming correctly if there really are nodes not in their control.

I care, you claim they are lying while you lack insufficient information to even make that assessment.


You have a strange eating habit ShadowOfRedHerring

[timeofmind]

Introducing more ripples in the system requires starting a new genesis ledger? That is interesting. Please explain.

OpenCoin doesn't "control" XRP in the sense that they can just send commands to the network to create new ones or arbitrarily adjust anyone's account balance. There's no transaction that means "create XRP." Even if you were to add such functionality yourself, you would have to convince everyone else running a validator that they should accept your change. And who would authorize the creation? No one would accept it.

Instead, I believe they constructed a ledger by hand that holds a 100 billion XRP balance in a designated account. Then they ran Ripple off of this ledger. If you query the validators and go back in history I believe you can trace all of the XRP in existence to that one account (it's mentioned in the wiki).

Anyone could of course fork Ripple once it's open sourced and make a brand new ledger but then the problem remains, who gets the 100 billion XRP? It makes the most sense for it to go to the people that wrote the software since they are the best positioned to keep improving it (and they already intimately know how it works).

You could try to remove the XRP entirely but that will create an enormous number of new problems such as what to do about connection spamming. It's easy to casually propose alternatives but they are difficult to get working right.

Ultimately any scheme to change either XRP's creation or distribution will likely fail, because there is already a growing body of businesses that are conducting commerce with the existing ledger chain.

Ah right. Makes sense. This might be an advantage then because it would be more difficult to use a bug to mint coin than it would be to do so in something like BitCoin which allows minting.

[Ichthyo]

If it's not open source what it it then? Surely it's not proprietary since the source code is available to the users.

What a strange logic.

Please just publish the Git url to pull all code form. All of it.

Until this does happen, it's closed source.
And the creators or ripple get the smell of fraudsters for using the positive connotation of "open source".

Being an open source developer myself, I can tell you: there is absolutely not the slightest practical problem to publish every line of code right away. It does not "help" you not to publish. The contrary is true. Publishing helps spotting your own "group think".

[ElectricMucus]

If it's not open source what it it then? Surely it's not proprietary since the source code is available to the users.

What a strange logic.

Please just publish the Git url to pull all code form. All of it.

Until this does happen, it's closed source.
And the creators or ripple get the smell of fraudsters for using the positive connotation of "open source".

Being an open source developer myself, I can tell you: there is absolutely not the slightest practical problem to publish every line of code right away. It does not "help" you not to publish. The contrary is true. Publishing helps spotting your own "group think".

Closed source does imply the binary is otherwise available, which it is not. If you are just using the client you are not a user. Users are those who run a node, and those get access to their github.

I don't know what their reasons are to make it not all public immediately, but I can't see anything that would lead me to the conclusion that it's fraud. It might be, but claiming that it is is so far stretched that it requires serious mental gymnastics to get there.

[timeofmind]

If it's not open source what it it then? Surely it's not proprietary since the source code is available to the users.

What a strange logic.

Please just publish the Git url to pull all code form. All of it.

Until this does happen, it's closed source.
And the creators or ripple get the smell of fraudsters for using the positive connotation of "open source".

Being an open source developer myself, I can tell you: there is absolutely not the slightest practical problem to publish every line of code right away. It does not "help" you not to publish. The contrary is true. Publishing helps spotting your own "group think".

They shouldn't claim that the source is "open" until they've actually opened it. They could say "we plan on releasing this software under an open-source licence", but to call it "open" in their marketing material is clearly false and misleading, since it is not yet open.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

If it's not open source what it it then? Surely it's not proprietary since the source code is available to the users.

What a strange logic.

Please just publish the Git url to pull all code form. All of it.

Until this does happen, it's closed source.
And the creators or ripple get the smell of fraudsters for using the positive connotation of "open source".

Being an open source developer myself, I can tell you: there is absolutely not the slightest practical problem to publish every line of code right away. It does not "help" you not to publish. The contrary is true. Publishing helps spotting your own "group think".

Closed source does imply the binary is otherwise available, which it is not. If you are just using the client you are not a user. Users are those who run a node, and those get access to their github.

You clearly have no idea what "Open Source" means.

"Open source in future" is NOT Open Source. Period.

If it were for me to decide, you would be marked as scammer together with Ripple for doing PR for them.

[ElectricMucus]

If it's not open source what it it then? Surely it's not proprietary since the source code is available to the users.

What a strange logic.

Please just publish the Git url to pull all code form. All of it.

Until this does happen, it's closed source.
And the creators or ripple get the smell of fraudsters for using the positive connotation of "open source".

Being an open source developer myself, I can tell you: there is absolutely not the slightest practical problem to publish every line of code right away. It does not "help" you not to publish. The contrary is true. Publishing helps spotting your own "group think".

Closed source does imply the binary is otherwise available, which it is not. If you are just using the client you are not a user. Users are those who run a node, and those get access to their github.

You clearly have no idea what "Open Source" means.

"Open source in future" is NOT Open Source. Period.

If it were for me to decide, you would be marked as scammer together with Ripple for doing PR for them.

Ok what is it then? Closed source/proprietary is when there is a binary but no source code right?
 
Then I am glad it isn't up to you, what a strange, strange world that would be.

[Ichthyo]

good points both of you.

And in addition, I want to point out that open source implies a mindset.


Thus, to summarise.

• the people of Opencoin do not want to share their ingineering work with outsiders
• the people of Opencoin do not want to get feedback and corrections from other people scrutinising their work
• the people of Opencoin do not want their creation to be judged based on facts, but prefer to sell it through a marketing deparment
• the people of Opencoin think it is better to create an elitist group who knows how things are done right, and the users are just to consume their final product, while a marketing department creates the necessary Spin.

These are clearly telltale signs which indicate we should be cautions with anything coming from Opencoin.
Please note, this might be an unjustified accusition.

Which all could have been avoided by just publishing a f**cking Git.

[ElectricMucus]

Well if you aren't sure an accusation is justified why make it?

[Ichthyo]

Well if you aren't sure an accusation is justified why make it?

That's a safeguard mearure for mental sanity.


There is a saying:

"Be careful when you argue with a zealot, because he might be right"